(Nanowerk) -- IMRE has developed a new
polymer that not only produces a high charge mobility of 0.2 cm2/V.s, which is
the same value achieved by commercially available semiconducting materials but
also has a high solar power conversion efficiency of 6.3%. This makes IMRE's
polymer one of the few that has both these properties. In addition to this,
polymers of the same class as IMRE's, which are those that use thiophene and
benzothiadiazole as the building blocks, could only achieve 2.2% power
conversion.

The polymer can also be easily applied in roll-to-roll printing
techniques which is similar to how newspapers are currently printed making it
possible to manufacture large area-scale printed electronics and organic solar
cells quickly and cheaply.

With IMRE's polymer, manufacturers could save cost using just a single
bulk resource for making both printed electronics and organic solar cells. The
material could also possibly be used in designing new devices where both power
harnessing and electronics are needed in a single component. An example of this
would be chemical sensors based on organic thin-film transistors and powered by
organic solar cells.

The IMRE team is developing other organic materials-based polymers that
can be scaled up to production and integrated easily into organic electronics.
These materials can be used to make energy harvesting and low-power consumption
devices like low-cost organic solar cells, new flexible display